1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus for performing recording for recording medium or paper by emitting ink on the recording medium, such as an ink-jet type recording apparatus, and a liquid emitting apparatus for emitting liquid onto a medium to make the liquid adhere to the medium.
The term “liquid emitting apparatus” is used for referring not only to a recording apparatus, having an ink-jet type recording head for emitting ink from the recording head so as to perform recording for a recording medium, such as a printer, a copier and a facsimile machine, but also to an apparatus that causes liquid to adhere to a medium, corresponding to the recording medium in the above recording apparatus, by emitting the liquid selected depending on the use of the apparatus in place of the ink toward the medium from a liquid emitting head corresponding to the recording head in the above recording apparatus.
As the liquid emitting head, the following heads can be considered other than the above recording head: a color-material emitting head used for fabrication of a color filter for a liquid crystal display or the like, an electrode-material (conductive paste) emitting head used for forming an electrode in an organic
EL display or a field-emission display (FED), a bioorganic compound emitting head used for fabrication of a bio-chip and a sample spraying head as a precision pipette.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an exemplary recording apparatus or liquid emitting apparatus is known an ink-jet type printer (hereinafter, referred to as a “printer”). A typical printer is shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B. The printer 200 includes a medium feeder 2 provided in the upstream of a transfer path for medium, as shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B. The medium feeder 2 holds one or more units of a medium, such as cut sheet or paper, that are stacked thereon to be at a certain angle with respect to the body of the printer and feeds one or more units of the medium one by one to the downstream of the feeding path. The printer 200 also includes: a carriage (not shown), arranged in the downstream of the feeder 2, for carrying a recording head mounted thereon that performs recording for the medium; and a transfer roller (not shown) for transferring the medium by rotating, which includes a transfer-driving roller and a transfer-driven roller.
The printer 200 is arranged to have the first and second transfer paths. On the first transfer path, one of more units of the medium, for example, one or more sheets of paper, that are stacked on the feeder 2 to be at a certain angle with respect to the body of the printer, are transferred toward the front side of the printer 200 one by one while being bent, so as to be discharged from the front side of the printer 200 in a substantially horizontal direction. On the second transfer path, a rigid medium that cannot be transferred on the above-mentioned first transfer path is substantially horizontally fed from the front side of the body 3 of the printer 200 so as to be discharged from the front side of the printer 200.
The second transfer path is used, for example, for performing recording for a rigid medium such as a CD-R (recordable compact disc). In this case, it is necessary to attach an exclusive discharge tray 202 that serves as a feeder tray used for manually feeding the rigid medium from the front side of the printer 200 toward the recording head and also serves as a discharge tray for receiving the rigid medium discharged after the recording, on the upper side of a discharge tray 201 that receives paper discharged after the recording.
Moreover, in order to perform recording for the rigid medium, it is necessary to adjust a distance between the rigid medium and the recording head by displacing the carriage for mounting the recording head thereon upward, thereby ensuring that the recording head is not in contact with the rigid medium. For achieving this object, the printer 200 includes a PG operation lever 203 for displacing a carriage guide axis to adjust a gap between the recording head and the recording medium. The PG operation lever 203 has to be operated by a user depending on the type of the medium, thus causing a trouble. In addition, even during a recording operation for the rigid medium, the PG operation lever 203 is operative. Thus, the PG operation lever 203 may be operated by an unexpected force so as to bring the carriage down, thereby bringing the recording head into contact with the rigid medium. In this case, the recording head may be damaged, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laying-Open 2002-192782, for example.